Ilia Malinin finds redemption during 3-peat performance at World Figure Skating Championships

[ASFN Admin]

You must be registered for see images

USA's Ilia Malinin celebrates with the US flag after winning the men's free skating program of the 2026 ISU Figure Skating World Championships in Prague, Czech Republic on March 28, 2026.
MICHAL CIZEK

Ilia Malinin is now a back-to-back-to-back world champion.

The United States figure skater won his third straight world championship on Saturday with a total score of 329.40 points to win gold by 22.73 over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama. Shun Sato, also from Japan, earned bronze.

Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season

The “Quad God’s” 329.40 total score during the 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Champions in Prague would have earned Malinin Olympic gold by 37.82 points.

Three straight ISU World Figure Skating titles for Ilia Malinin

(via @NBCOlympics)pic.twitter.com/rQmSJNecTZ

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) March 28, 2026

Malinin’s win comes six weeks after a disastrous finish at the Milan Cortina Olympics where the 21-year-old gold medal-favorite finished eighth after an error-filled free skate.

“My expectation was to leave the long program in one piece, and I definitely think that happened,” he said afterward.

The worlds had been targeted by Malinin as a way to prove his Olympics showing was an aberration. During his final skate, he landed five quadruple jumps, most in the field, but not the quad axel. It didn’t matter.



Malinin is now the second-youngest American to win three world titles, joining Dick Button, and he's the youngest man to win three since Alexei Yagudin of Russia in 2000. He is also the first skater since Nathan Chen (2018-2021) to win three consecutive world titles.

Continue reading...